Coatings play a useful role in the manufacture of a great many articles which find wide use in nearly all facets of contemporary life. Until recently, nearly all coatings were applied with the employment of a hydrocarbon based solvent which evaporated leaving a dried coating on the article which was to be coated. This system met with increasing disfavor as the price of organic solvent increased and as the deleterious environmental effects of the evaporated solvent became better understood. Systems aimed at solvent recovery to reduce pollution and conserve solvent have generally proven to be expensive and energy intensive. In response, those skilled in the art have devised a class of coatings termed radiation-curable coatings in which, upon exposure to radiation, virtually all of the liquid portion of the coating is converted to cured coating resulting in little solvent emission.
Unfortunately many of the radiation-curable coatings which have been heretofore manufactured are highly viscous and difficult to apply to the substrate requiring dilution of the coating material with volatile solvents. A radiation-curable coating which is of such low viscosity so as to avoid the use of diluents would be of great advantage.